Abbott comes out slugging, tax first

Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
moved quickly yesterday to paint his new opponent as an interim leader who lacked a mandate from the Australian people, as the Coalition took aim at Labor over asylum seekers and the resource super profits tax.

Mr Abbott said
Julia Gillard
had gained the nation’s highest job as the result of a “midnight knock on the door" from Labor’s factional leaders and that she had not been able to set out a new direction for the nation.

“They’ve changed the salesman but they haven’t changed the product," Mr Abbott said. “The problem with this government has not been the leader, the problem has been the policies."

Making the most of Ms Gillard’s admission that the government had lost its way, the Coalition challenged her to take responsibility for failures including the house fires caused by the home insulation scheme and the heavy spending on school buildings.

The Coalition tactics committee chose to focus its attack on the RSPT, making it the subject of the first parliamentary questions Ms Gillard faced soon after she was sworn in.

Mr Abbott challenged Ms Gillard to prove her good faith in relation to her promise to negotiate with miners to seek an outcome on the RSPT.

He argued that if Ms Gillard was genuine, she would reconsider the budget assumption that the RSPT would boost government revenue by $3 billion in its first year and by $9 billion in its second.

“Until she pulls the revenue and not just the ads, she is just as committed to the mining tax as her predecessor," the Opposition Leader said. He also noted that Ms Gillard and her new deputy, Treasurer
Wayne Swan
, shared responsibility for devising the tax as members of the Rudd government’s cabinet committee.

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Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop asked Ms Gillard what policy change there had been if the “same ministers" were conducting negotiations with the mining industry with the “same $12 billion" of budgeted revenue from the RSPT.

Mr Abbott said that if Australians wanted to see new policies, they would have to vote the Coalition into power.

He congratulated his new adversary on her accession to “the highest, in this case non-elected, office in the land. Because she hasn’t yet been elected. And it’s my job to make sure she is never elected by the Australian people".

“Prime ministers should not be treated this way," he said. “A prime minister elected by the people has been executed by the unions and the factional warlords. The style of the NSW Labor mafia has been in evidence over the last 24 hours."

Mr Abbott positioned the Coalition as a source of stability amid the Labor turmoil. “I can offer the Australian people a united, a stable and experienced team in a way that Labor plainly can’t," he said.

The way the change in the Labor leadership came about would influence voters, he added.

“I think a lot of people watching the ugly assassination which has taken place today will be very disillusioned with the Labor Party," he said.

Ms Bishop also used the opportunity to take a swipe at Ms Gillard by referring to the “unprecedented assassination" of Mr Rudd.

Ms Gillard was quick to return the sledge: “I thank the same old deputy leader of the opposition for her question and wish her well as she serves her third leader."

Mr Abbott criticised Ms Gillard’s approach to climate change, saying her rhetoric on the subject had been almost as evangelical as Mr Rudd’s. She was adopting the same approach as her predecessor by arguing that delaying action on climate change was not a denial of the need to act, but then delaying the introduction of an emissions trading scheme, he said.

Mr Abbott said the Coalition could win the next election. “No election was unloseable. No election is unwinnable," he said. “I think this election is very winnable but we have a long, long way to go."